


lover

by beepbeeprichie (ellewriteswrongs)



Series: it one-shots & song fics [1]
Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Adult Losers Club (IT), Aged-Up Losers Club (IT), Based on a Taylor Swift Song, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Marriage, Nurse!Eddie, Sad Ending, Song Lyrics, Song: Lover (Taylor Swift), Songfic, drama teacher!richie, lover but it's reddie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 12:19:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20447054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellewriteswrongs/pseuds/beepbeeprichie
Summary: ever since i first heard this song i started thinking about writing this and at the last minute i completely changed the ending but here she islover - a reddie songfic





	lover

**Author's Note:**

> just a warning, this does follow some of the canon events in chapter 2, but with a few changes to incorporate their relationship:) 
> 
> sorry in advance

** _We could leave the Christmas lights up 'til January_ **

Christmas was Eddie’s favorite holiday and he made sure everyone knew it. Richie loved Halloween with a burning passion, but he couldn’t deny the fact that he loves the eccentricity of the festive season and how it brought out a childish excitement in his boyfriend that he absolutely adored.

** _This is our place, we make the rules_ **

Richie’s one caveat for the extravagant decorations that Eddie loved was that they had to stay up until at least a week past New Year’s. His smaller partner was far too short to put up most of the decorations he collected like family heirlooms. There was a whole section of their attic that was just full of Eddie’s Christmas decorations even though it was always Richie that had to do the decorating.

** _And there's a dazzling haze, a mysterious way about you, dear_ **

He didn’t mind it though. There were few things he loved more than the ability to spend the entire day of December first every year covering their entire house in Christmas lights only to find Eddie standing under the mistletoe in their doorway, the glow of the warm white lights making him look just like an angel.

** _Have I known you twenty seconds or twenty years?_ **

Every day it blew his mind how they continued to stay a solid pair for decades. Richie was going on two years out of college with Eddie in his last year of nursing school and they were stronger than ever. Every single morning Richie was just as in awe of how lucky he was to wake up next to the most amazing boy in the world. Eddie even had to pinch himself every day when he came home from class and saw Richie in the kitchen making dinner.

** _Can I go where you go?_ **

They had trips planned, dozens of them. As soon as Eddie was out of school they would travel the world together. Their honeymoon was too short for both of their liking, but they were going to make up for it with a world tour just the two of them.

** _Can we always be this close forever and ever?_ **

Everyone they met seemed to have a tough time understanding how they were even together, let alone having been together for almost a decade already at twenty-four years old. They were practically polar opposites, always had been, but they fit together perfectly like two pieces of a puzzle and neither cared whether or not the rest of the world could understand them.

** _And ah, take me out, and take me home_ **

The day they bought their first house was their first anniversary after getting married. Richie just landed his dream job as a high school drama teacher and Eddie had just finished his fourth year of med school at the top of his class on track to graduate early and they found this perfect one-bedroom house in the neighborhood within walking distance of the train Eddie took to school and just a few blocks from the local high school where Richie worked.

** _You're my, my, my, my lover_ **

‘Lover’ was always Eddie’s favorite of Richie’s seemingly-endless slew of pet names for him. He’d started calling him ‘lover boy’ ever since the summer Eddie broke his arm at thirteen and it had stuck for over a decade since. Nothing could make him melt more than when he would walk into their living room and see Richie curled up on the couch reaching out to him with a softly-spoken, “C’mere lover” making his heart swell.

** _We could let our friends crash in the living room_ **

Richie and Eddie were the only losers with an actual house. Ben and Beverly had an apartment in Portland and Stan shared one with Stan in Boston, but Mike was still in Derry currently getting a masters degree in history. Still, despite their distance, they all made sure to spend a weekend at Richie and Eddie’s at least once a month, no matter once.

** _This is our place, we make the call_ **

Eddie hated having guests, but he always made an exception when it came to the losers. Over the years he grew out of a lot of his hypochondriac tendencies, but once the mess got more extreme than usual, even the smallest things could send him into a panic attack. It was an unspoken gesture that Richie would be awake first the next morning every time the losers came to visit and trashed their living room.

** _And I'm highly suspicious that everyone who sees you wants you_ **

The one thing they could both agree on for years was how they couldn’t believe how lucky they were to be loved by the other. Eddie, in particular, was blown away by how Richie never even wavered for a moment when countless of his students’ parents and other teachers would hit on him and pry into his relationship but he turned them all down without a second thought. Eddie’s beautiful husband with the brightest smile who was great with kids and made him laugh every chance he got.

** _I've loved you three summers now, honey, but I want 'em all_ **

It had been three years since they’d gotten married. It wasn’t exactly a surprise considering Richie proposed on their six-year anniversary, but they were both still in college and barely older than twenty-one. Still, Eddie didn’t even hesitate to say yes when Richie went down on one knee in the rain on the roof of their old apartment building where their anniversary picnic dinner had been ruined because Richie had thought to double-check everything but the weather forecast.

** _Can I go where you go?_ **

Eddie started driving Richie to work in the mornings ever since the first day of his husband’s new job. His classes were mostly in the evenings and nights so they made sure to spend every moment we could together. Throughout the years, Eddie never stopped and a few of Richie’s most faithful students stated to recognize him in the car each morning and would say a quick hello to ‘Mr. Tozier’s husband’, which Eddie found incredibly adorable.

** _Can we always be this close forever and ever?_ **

All of their new friends that they made would comment on how, despite how their schedules only left them a few hours a day together, they seemed to always be attached at the hip. Richie would pick up dinner on his way home after work and drop it off as soon as Eddie was about to start his shift and all of his coworkers would fawn over how cute it was that they always tried to at least share the same dinner even if they couldn’t eat together.

** _And ah, take me out, and take me home (forever and ever)_ **

Richie hadn’t wanted to buy a house at first. He loved their apartment and it was full of memories, but Eddie insisted that they were ready. As it turned out, Richie had loved sharing a real home with his husband so much more than he could’ve imagined. They still had a photo of Richie carrying Eddie bridal-style in their front yard as the smaller boy kicked at their ‘for sale’ sign framed in their hallway.

** _You're my, my, my, my lover_ **

Richie never once lost his sense of humor, but as the years progressed, Eddie found a way to shut him up that was more effective than everything else he had tried. The classic “beep beep Richie” had been replaced with a cheeky “beep beep, lover” and Richie would always melt without fail, effectively making him abandon whatever joke he’d been annoying his husband with.

** _Ladies and gentlemen, will you please stand?_ **

Richie hadn’t stopped his stand up comedy even with his new job. Every once in awhile he’d do a few night gigs at bars and coffee shops on the weekend, but Eddie had only been able to make it a handful of times in the years that he’d been doing it. Richie loved to make people laugh, but no one more than Eddie Kaspbrak.

** _With every guitar string scar on my hand_ **

It wasn’t often that Eddie allowed himself to admit any sort of interest in the things that Richie considered fun, especially when most of them annoyed him to his core as long as they’d known each other. Guitar, however, was the one hobby of Richie’s that he had to admit he loved. The way Richie’s hands guided his as he taught him to play some overplayed rock song sitting on the coffee table in their living room on a Wednesday night was perfect.

** _I take this magnetic force of a man to be my lover_ **

Magnetic was a good way to describe their relationship. No matter how many times they were separated, they would always snap back together as if they were never apart. Eddie had even bought a little magnetic heart online that split in two pieces and was held together with a magnet. He had the two halves engraved with their initials and it stayed on his bedside table, only to be moved whenever they would be apart from each other for any stretch of time.

** _My heart's been borrowed and yours has been blue_ **

They’d never loved anyone else the way they loved each other. Neither had dated anyone else, but they loved and they loved with a passion that burned like a thousand suns for their friends and family. Richie’s father had walked out on him and his mother when he was fifteen, effectively taking a piece of his son’s heart with him. Eddie’s mother had been reported to Child Protective Services shortly after Eddie’s fourteenth birthday and he lived with the Denbrough family until he and Richie moved in together at eighteen. Their hearts had both been broken over the years, but they both knew each other better than they knew themselves. They knew how to put each other back together.

** _All's well that ends well to end up with you_ **

Eddie was sure that his favorite thing Richie had ever said to him was in the winter break of their senior year. They were spending time with the rest of the losers, minus Stan who’s family was busy with Chanukah celebrations, and they had somehow selves into the topic of going off to college. Acceptance letters would be rolling in soon and even though they had applied to all of the same schools, Eddie was terrified that he and Richie wouldn’t be able to go together. In a blur of shared dreams, he uttered the most beautiful words Eddie had ever heard leave his mouth in the dumbest British accent he’d ever heard. “All's well that ends well to end up with you, Eddie Spaghetti,” he beamed, and Eddie knew he wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of their lives together.

** _Swear to be overdramatic and true to my lover_ **

Richie Tozier was nothing of not overdramatic, but Eddie would be lying out of his ass if he said he didn’t love it. The homemade dinners in the shape of a heart for their anniversary, the vintage boombox on Richie’s hip blaring Cyndi Lauper as he waited in the parking lot to pick Eddie up from class, the matching tourist-y couples outfits every time they went on vacation. He loved it with every fiber of his being because it meant that Richie wasn’t afraid to tell the world that he loved him. He could definitely stomach the embarrassment for that.

** _And you'll save all your dirtiest jokes for me_ **

The humor that made Richie Tozier-Kaspbrak the trashmouth Eddie knew and loved never went away, or even faded in the slightest, but to Richie’s delight, Eddie’s humor only got dirtier with age. In front of their friends, Eddie wouldn’t be caught dead even laughing at an innuendo, but at home, he was one foul-mouthed motherfucker, as Richie would say. He even snuck a ‘your mom’ joke in his vows and it made Richie cry real tears.

** _And at every table, I'll save you a seat, lover_ **

Skype dates were a staple at the current stage of their lives. Eddie was a med student working late into the night at the local children’s hospital and Richie was a high school drama teacher that had to wake up at the ass crack of dawn for work and stay late a handful of weeks a year for play rehearsal. They made a promise years earlier to always have dinner together, though, and even if they couldn’t make it home, they would always be on Skype together without fail.

** _Can I go where you go?_ **

“Rich, we have to go. It’s Mike, we _promised_ him-we promised _all of them_.” The phone call that ruined their lives, Richie called it, always with the flair for dramatics. “Eds, we were _kids_. We can just risk our lives to save a bunch of people who never did anything but leave us to fend for ourselves!” They hardly ever fought like they did the night of the phone call. “I’m going with or without you. I can’t abandon our friends when they need us.” Richie would rather die than let Eddie go alone with the possibility of never getting him back.

** _Can we always be this close forever and ever?_ **

Richie’s hands gripped his back and he could feel his own jacket around Eddie’s shoulder’s getting soaked with blood and sewer water. He didn’t even notice he was crying until Eddie reached up and brushed his tears away. He wanted to scream, he wanted to scream and never stop because how _dare it_ take away the only good thing in his life. Eddie was fading fast and Richie felt like he was dying right along with him as he held his husband in his arms and begged him not to go, not to leave him all alone.

** _And ah, take me out, and take me home (forever and ever)_ **

Eddie wanted to go home. To his home with Richie and their fishes named after the lead singers of three of Richie’s favorite rock bands. He wanted to go back to the day before the phone call where he and his husband went downtown to their favorite bagel shop right as it opened before Richie had to get to work. He had to admit, lying in a pool of his own blood and sewer water deep beneath the town that brought him the love of his life, that dying in Richie’s arms surrounded by the closest thing to a family he’d ever had was close enough to home for him to be happy.

** _You're my, my, my, my_ **

Richie was begging. He didn’t want to believe it and he didn’t know what to do. The rest of the losers had the courtesy to stand back and give Richie space to be with his husband as he died, but just watching him was enough to make them feel everything just as fiercely as Richie did. His soul was on fire. His heart was ripped clean out of his chest and all he could bring himself to do was tell Eddie how much he loved him and hold him one last time. “I told you,” he hated himself for saying. “I told you we shouldn’t go.” Eddie smiled at him in a way that made the whole world around them melt away.

** _Oh, you're my, my, my, my_ **

“As if I’d ever go anywhere without you,” Eddie whispered, his forehead pressed against Richie’s as he fought with everything he had to keep his eyes open. Richie forced out a laugh, tears cascading down his cheeks in a never-ending waterfall. “Then don’t go, baby,” he whimpered, weaving a hand through Eddie’s hair. His voice cracked with every word. “Don’t leave me, Eds. I can’t do this without you.”

_**Darling, you're my, my, my, my** _

“Don’t call me Eds,” Eddie spoke, barely a whisper. Richie kissed his forehead before cupping the dying man’s cheeks. “You know I-I-I…”

** _Lover_ **

“You know I _love_ _you_.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! if you want to check me out on tumblr, my blog is @krustywhore and i post about one piece of original content a month but oh well
> 
> i hope you like this! i wrote a few things for the it fandom back in 2017 but i have since deleted them sadly. i'm sooo excited for chapter 2 though and if anyone wants to chat about it with me on tumblr, hmu!
> 
> comments and kudos are greatly appreciated and any requests are always welcome:)


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